Monday, September 16

Healthy First Birthday Cake: Dairy-free, Egg-free and Gluten-free

A few weeks ago I wrote about Little Gals' perfect first birthday party. But I didn't write much about the yummiest part - the cake and cupcakes! Although we haven't seen signs of food allergies in Little Gal (saying prayers that we don't!), I still needed to make the cake and cupcakes gluten, egg, dairy, nut and sesame free since Little Guy has food allergies. That means no bakery made cakes!

I not only wanted to make safe cakes and cupcakes for Little Guy, but I also wanted to make a healthy first birthday cake for Little Gal. I decided to use the oat muffin recipe from Sophie-Safe Cooking to make Little Gal's healthy birthday cake. I like that the recipe focuses on oats and contains less sugar than other birthday cake recipes I've found. This recipe makes 12 small muffins, so it also fit perfectly into a 6 inch cake pan - a perfect first birthday cake size!

Little Gal's First Birthday Cake. Main ingredient: Oats!

I also used Cybele Pascal's recipe for allergy-friendly vanilla frosting and it turned out GREAT. It's thick enough to make pretty decorations and it tastes just like traditional frosting. *Sadly, Cybele's blog is no longer available! Here is another allergy friendly buttercream icing from Kids with Food Allergies that looks similar and just as easy and tasty!

Here are some other tips of how I made Little Gal's first birthday cakes and cupcakes:

1. Make a small special cake just for baby. Why? Because it's fun! Buy a 6 inch cake pan for the baby cake. I think it's fun to put a small cake in front of them rather than a cupcake or REALLY big cake. So, you have one cake (and/or cupcakes) to serve the guests and one for baby to get messy!

I wasn't about to decorate all this with a ziplock bag. Pastry bag to the rescue!

3. Keep it simple with the icing decorations.This is especially true if you are a novice cake baker and decorator like me! I made simple designs with my pastry bag like dots and swirls.

Keep the icing decorations simple!

4. Use fresh flowers for colorful decoration.This is especially great if you want to avoid artificial food coloring and dyes, but I still wanted a pretty cake with a little color!

5. Be creative with your "1" decoration.I used Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips which are dairy-free to decorate the cake for the guests. We put a "1" candle on Little Gal's cake. I've also seen cool "1" designs with sprinkles, fruit or other safe candy.

Here are all the allergy-friendly cupcakes and cakes that are dairy-free, egg-free and gluten-free!

I was happy that someone asked me for my recipe for the chocolate cake. I had to tell her it was directly from Betty Crocker's kitchen!

Here are some examples of the supplies I used to create the first birthday cakes and cupcakes. Hope they're useful to you!

This is NOT a sponsored post, and I was not paid to include these products. This is what I actually used for our first birthday party celebration! This post does include affiliate Amazon links. That means I may get a few cents if you buy something on Amazon from these links. Thanks for your support!

Wow - this is the quite the spread for a first birthday party. Everything looks so delicious. I'm so happy to have found your blog. My son is coming up to this 1st birthday and I'm on the lookout for healthy recipes for him! Coming to you from Bloggy Moms,Alia

I used the oat muffin recipe from Sophie Safe cooking for the first birthday "smash cake". Unfortunately I can't reprint the recipe without permission, so I encourage you to buy the cookbook! I did find the recipe on Google books, so try Googling "oat muffin Sophie Safe" and see if it pops up for you. I believe Google books shows different pages of books at different times though, so if you do find it make sure to copy it down immediately! Also, I used this recipe for icing: http://cybelepascal.com/allergy-free-easter-cupcakes/. Don't be afraid to add more rice milk if you need to think out the icing a bit. I hope this works well for you!

The link to the allergy friendly icing is no longer available! I used this link for my twins birthday cakes every year and revisit the website. Do you happen to have the icing recipe written down that you could share? I am kicking myself now for not writing it down.

Rachel - oh no! Thanks for pointing that out. Cybele must have deleted her blog. I updated my blog post with another link to a basic buttercream icing recipe that looks similar from the Kids with Food Allergies website. Let me know how this works out for you! http://www.kidswithfoodallergies.org/page/recipe-page.aspx?recid=572